


the fallacy of herodotus

by nevermordor



Category: One Piece
Genre: Blood, Boss/Employee Relationship, Canon Compliant, Cunnilingus, F/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, no happy ending, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: mutualismmu·tu·al·ism | \ ˈmyü-chə-wə-ˌli-zəmnoun—1. the doctrine or practice of mutual dependence2. a mutually beneficial association between different kinds of organisms
Relationships: Crocodile/Nico Robin
Comments: 16
Kudos: 99





	the fallacy of herodotus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturndevouring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturndevouring/gifts).



> when one piece is so good, it got you shipping het, even when it's mean het like this is.
> 
> for my dear beta reader and even dearer friend bee. consider it an early christmas present. this wouldn't have been possible without you.
> 
> Now [translated into Russian here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9512664/24410033), much thanks to an_himmeln!

Her food isn’t being poisoned.

She’s been skipping meals for days now, as she sits in her newly assigned quarters, pretending to do research. The staff have been ordered not to interrupt her work and so the maid is quick when she comes to collect the breakfast plates that morning—so quick that she doesn’t notice that the plates have been cleared but that the silverware is unused. The food, at least whatever will keep for a while, is folded up into napkins and placed in the small bag Robin’s hidden beneath her bed. Provisions, for when she’ll need to flee this place too.

At half past eleven, she takes her mid-morning walk: a quick lap around the wide lobby of Rain Dinners and once around the courtyard out front. She’s done it every day since she arrived. By now the staff has grown used to her and so nobody’s paying much attention at all when Robin takes a left where she should take a right. She retraces her steps, back to the roped off hallway, to the staircase leading down to Crocodile’s office. The deadbolt is still slightly loosened from the last time she broke in.

On the surface, Rain Dinners is glittering and lovely, all white marble and inlaid gold that blinds in the glow of the Alabastan sun. Crocodile’s office, by contrast, is cold and dark. The walls and the surface of his desk are bare, the furniture plain and ugly. The sun never reaches down here. She rather prefers his office—at least when he isn’t occupying it. Robin peruses the shelves. The books are for display only. When she searches his desk, she finds a loaded pistol in the bottom drawer and a button on the arm of his chair that she presses after a moment’s hesitation. There’s a low, mechanical hum. The floor shudders minutely beneath her feet as tiles shift, peel back, opening onto a pit at the center of the room. She’s struck at once by the smell of the river, of something rotting. Robin peers over the edge of the pit, into water dark with muddied silt. Here and there, shadows dart beneath the surface.

She’s only ever glimpsed the bananawanis as flashes of tails, as claws that rake the glass of the aquarium walls. Robin watches them gather below, gazing up at her. Seven in total. They circle, slow, curious. She wonders when they were fed last.

Her stomach is tight with hunger. She knows better than to worry about anyone’s survival except her own.

Robin pictures the bag of food, tucked beneath her bed. Dozens of her hands bloom along the walls and ceiling in a trail of limbs that crawls back up the long staircase, along the edge of the lobby, reaching all the way back up into her room. She rummages through the bag, grabbing handfuls of small bundles that she brings back to herself at the side of the pit. She unwraps one napkin, soaked through with grease, and drops a crumbled handful of bacon into the pit. The water erupts at once in froth and foam. The bananawanis must have been starving. She unfolds another napkin, this one full of cold sausages, and drops it into the water as well.

“Strange,” Crocodile says. “I could have sworn I locked the door.”

He’s not supposed to be back from Mariejois for another three days. That was what he told her and yet when she turns, he’s at his desk like he never even left, shrugging out of his overcoat, cutting himself a fresh cigar. She didn’t hear him come in. Robin thinks of the loaded pistol in the drawer and smiles, blank and polite. “Very strange,” she agrees. “The door was open when I tried it. You’ll forgive me. You have such a large estate, Sir Crocodile. I got a little lost.”

Crocodile exhales a stream of smoke. “It’s almost time for them to eat,” he says, nodding to the open pit behind her. “Give me a moment. I’ll be right back.”

“I wouldn’t want to get in your way—”

“It’ll be just a moment, Miss All Sunday,” Crocodile says softly. “Stay.”

She stays. He disappears back up the stairs—one hundred and seventy steps between her and the nearest exit—and Robin watches the bananawanis continue to circle. When he returns, he’s carrying a platter of raw meat and seems amused to find her still waiting there. Crocodile skewers a steak with the tip of his hook, dangling it lazily over the side of the pit. Blood drips; the water shivers in anticipation. “I breed them myself,” he says. “Remarkable predators. They rely on deception and stealth to hunt. Often they’ll lay in wait, pretending to be logs or bits of debris in order to lure in their prey. Why aren’t you wearing the clothes I ordered for you?”

The elegant dresses and jewelry have been packed away in a separate bag at the back of her closet. She’ll use them to buy her escape to the next island once Alabasta collapses. Every man she’s worked for is different. Some are proud and boastful, others weak and simpering. Sir Crocodile is none of these things but all men are the same when they can hold something over a woman’s head. Robin’s feet ache in stolen shoes and she’s long outgrown the skirt she’s wearing but it’s still a victory, if a token one.

“They act like they haven’t eaten in days,” she says instead, ignoring the question. The largest of the bananawanis, a female with a ragged scar along the right side of her face, has clawed her way atop the others. She peers up at them with beady eyes. “Is that how you keep them loyal? Through their meals?”

“Bananawanis aren’t like dogs. Their hunger doesn’t make them loyal. I could starve them,” Crocodile says, sounding thoughtful, “but it wouldn’t accomplish anything. That’s what makes them such excellent hunters. When food is scarce, they can wait for months, up to a year, before they need to feed again. Like I said: Clever. Patient. The only thing they respect is strength and pure power.” He drops the hunk of meat at last. The large female bananawani snaps her jaws shut and the surrounding water is stained pink.

Crocodile smiles. There’s something not quite right about his smile: the faded yellow color of his teeth, the sharpness of them. It’s less like a smile—more like he’s baring his teeth. He tips the rest of the platter carelessly into the tank below and the bananawanis tear at the meat in a frenzy. The curve of his hook is tarnished with drying blood. “Won’t you join me for tea? I’ve news to share from Mariejois. And anyway, you look hungry, Miss All Sunday.”  
  
  
  
  
It’s hot in Alabasta. Ohara was moderate winters and cool summers. Alabasta burns bright. The sun hurts her eyes, the air dry and raw in her nose, in her throat. During the long afternoons she retreats into the shade of her bedroom, lying on the cold floor and praying for a breeze that never comes.

At dusk she sits on her balcony, sipping mint tea and looking out across the distant dunes, the domed rooftops of Rainbase, the teeming banks of the river below. The bananawanis drift silently through the water. They snap at the ibises in warning, rip apart schools of fish. In the fading sunlight they drag their massive bodies up onto the shore, scattering flocks of screaming queleas. The reeds quiver as the plover birds dart through the long grass, quick and quiet.

Unlike the queleas, the plovers don’t flee. The bananawanis yawn, their mouths propped open, and the plovers scurry forward into their gaping jaws.

Don’t go, Robin thinks, though she never cries out, never reaches across the river to rescue them from the imminent danger as the birds disappear, one by one, into the bananawanis’ mouths.

Don’t go.  
  
  
  
  
She knows from the growing ache behind her eyes that it’s late, even before she looks up from her book to find the sky outside her window gone dark and her single candle burned down to a puddle of wax.

She’s been at it for hours, hunched over a dictionary she found in the library archives, trying to learn an ancient version of the Alabastan alphabet. Her mouth is dry and her back groans in protest when she stands up from her desk. It’s been years since she worked like this: not killing work but translation, transcription, mundane and tedious and academic. The type of work she’s good at.

She ought to try and sleep but her mind is still moving too fast, threatening to outpace her. Robin grabs her favorite shawl from her closet and slips out into the hall.

Her midday walk has become wandering the gardens at night. At first it was just an opportunity to study the high walls, to estimate their height, the number of hands needed to scale them and to kill any guards on duty. Robin follows along the curve of the moat. The hedges have been trimmed recently and the air still smells of leaf clippings. One of the night guards posted near the main gate recognizes her and waves. The jasmine is beginning to fade, the night-blooming flowers curling up and retreating into themselves. There’s a faint chill in the air. It’ll be autumn soon. The days are already growing shorter. At some point, months slid past her.

She’s surprised to see the garden’s pavilion lit up, along the far east side of Rain Dinner’s courtyard. It’s past midnight but candelabras have been set out, the surrounding water rippled with gold. There’s a makeshift desk set up, stacked with paperwork. Crocodile’s reclined nearby in an old, cracked leather chair, blowing smoke rings. He’s dispensed with his usual vest. His hair is loose rather than slicked back. He’s barefoot.

Robin realizes she’s staring.

Crocodile’s spotted her. There’s a brief flash of annoyance in his expression before it smooths itself over again. She’s caught him off his guard. Robin’s surprised by how much the thought pleases her. “Chilly out, isn’t it?” she says.

“Very. One would hate to be out in this weather.”

“I find it rather refreshing. Perhaps I could join you. Help you get some of that work done.” There’s a savage pleasure in this too: taking up space where she never dared to before.

A slight tic pulses in Crocodile’s jaw. He doesn’t dismiss her, only hands her a stack of documents as she joins him on the pavilion. “How thoughtful, Miss All Sunday.”

“I like making myself useful.”

There’s nowhere for her to sit. He occupies the only chair, his feet braced against a low stool that he doesn’t offer to her. She moves to the far end of the pavilion, to the short flight of marble steps leading down to the water’s edge. Robin folds herself up, reviewing an audit of the casino’s expenses from last month, making notes in the margins with her quill.

She can feel herself being watched. He often watches her, for tells, for signs of weakness. Robin lets him look a while longer. When she finally lifts her head, though, it’s not his eyes that are on her. A bananawani has surfaced at the bottom of the steps. In the candlelight, its eyes are spangled and aglow. 

“Careful,” Crocodile says tauntingly.

Robin holds very still. The bananawani drifts closer. It’s the big female with the scar on her face. She considers Robin, without hunger or interest. Robin puts her quill down. Slowly, she reaches out, lays her palm flat against the creature’s snout. The bananawani’s skin is rough and wet. The angle of her scar pulls her mouth into an even more fearsome grin. She’s an ugly, fat, lumbering thing and Robin is helplessly endeared. “What’s her name?” she hears herself asking.

Crocodile’s quiet a moment. “Demeter.”

“You’re familiar with classical mythology?”

“I heard a few stories when I was a cabin boy.”

It’s strange, to think of him as a boy. “She was a goddess of the harvest and the cycle of life and death. A child of Cronus.”

“I don’t know Cronus.” His tone is clipped. He never likes it when she knows more than he does. “They never told me that story.”

“He was a Titan. He killed his father so that he could rule the world in a Golden Age.” Robin hesitates, remembering the book of mythology she borrowed once from Ohara’s library. She remembers sitting alone in the woods, as she read about how the world was made. Again and again, she turned back to look at the story’s accompanying illustration: Cronus’s hulking body, his mad eyes, his gaping mouth and the blood on his hands.

“But,” Crocodile prompts, smirking.

“But Cronus’s children were prophesied to be his downfall. Rather than be overthrown by them, he ate them whole.”

Crocodile’s gaze is on the horizon, on the cold, remote moon low in the sky. “Power’s a fragile thing, I guess.”

“In a way, we’re all like that. We’re all just trying our best not to be devoured.” The bananawani grunts, shifting her enormous bulk as she slides back into the water and disappears beneath the surface. Robin’s palm is still damp. “You should let them out more often,” she says.

“You’re gonna make me think you prefer their company over mine.”

“I’m well-acquainted with monsters, Sir Crocodile.”

His gaze is dark and thoughtful and she can tell he’s considering whether or not to smile. At length, he does. She wishes he hadn’t.  
  
  
  
  
It would be easy, is the thing.

Every afternoon as the bananawanis sun themselves, the plover birds gather in their mouths. They perch atop rows of sharp, exposed teeth, picking at the leeches that cake the bananawanis’ gums and shreds of decaying flesh. All the while the bananawani waits, patient and unblinking.

It would be all too easy, for the bananawani to suddenly snap its jaws shut, to swallow the birds whole.

But then the plovers might learn to be cautious. They might never come back. The bananawani’s mouth would rot, for without the birds, it cannot keep its teeth.

That’s all survival is, really. A game. A balancing act.  
  
  
  
  
There are marine warships docked in Nanohara’s harbor upon her return to Alabasta. Robin takes the long way back to Rainbase. Banchi ambles across the dunes, past what remains of Erumalu. Half a year of draught has already hollowed the town out. Its homes stand silent and empty, its oasis filled with dust.

Once, she could have loved a country like this: its rich dialects and snaking ribbons of river. She could have lost herself in Nanohara’s sprawling marketplace, along Erumalu’s worn paths, amidst the stacks of Alubarna’s ancient library, if only she were a younger, better version of herself. But she isn’t.

Banchi crests the last dune and the glitter of Rain Dinners is a crown jewel on the horizon, beckoning her home.

There’s plenty for her to attend to after being gone nearly a week. Before she makes her rounds on the floor, she retreats to her quarters; washes the dust out of her hair and changes into one of the many fitted dresses Crocodile bought her when she began working full time as the casino’s manager. She finds him in his office, at his desk, buried in reports. His gaze wanders along the curved bodice of her dress as she gives him her update. No doubt he’s pleased to see her in his handpicked wardrobe at last. Another token victory, for him this time. The price to pay for Banchi, for ocean air against her skin and a slightly longer leash.

“Daz Bones has agreed to join Baroque Works,” she informs him. “He’ll be here within the month to discuss the terms of your arrangement.”

Crocodile absorbs the news. The corner of his mouth curls into a smirk. “I knew he would,” he says simply.

It’s a busy night. She signs off on a flurry of forms to order more kitchen supplies, catches up with her blackjack dealers and hostesses, greets all the regular high-rollers. After the casino doors close for the night, she sits at the bar with the head chef to review the new menu until he can no longer repress his yawning, and she sends both him and the bartender home to their wives.

The clock strikes the hour. Two in the morning. Her feet hurt and she still hasn’t eaten yet. Robin gazes out across the empty, gleaming lobby as a tired satisfaction seeps through her.

She did this. She helped build it: this place, the first thing in her life she’s ever had control over,

There’s the low scrape of a stool as Crocodile sits down next to her at the bar. He’s got a bottle of wine in hand. He reaches behind the counter, producing a glass for them each. “Five agents now. Think that calls for a drink.”

“I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a good mood,” Robin says.

“This is everything we’ve been working for. Be pleased with yourself, Miss All Sunday. I know I am.”

We.

“That’s hardly new for you, Sir Crocodile,” she jokes. “You’re always pleased with yourself.”

The lobby’s grand chandelier dims. They take turns filling each other’s glasses until the bottle stands empty. She’s not sure what time it is anymore. Her eyes feel heavy and her mouth feels clumsy, thick with the taste of wine. She ought to excuse herself. Instead she finds herself listening intently as Crocodile tells her about the first time he went out to sea. It was a fishing trip. They’d needed someone to help cast the nets and he’d lied about his age and about being able to swim. “Nearly fuckin’ drowned,” he admits.

“Hardly an auspicious start to your career.”

“We can’t all be Demon Children.”

“What an impressive threat I made too, at eight years old,” Robin says wryly. “An awkward, quiet little bookworm.”

Crocodile swirls the last of his wine, watching as it spins in the bottom of his glass. “I can picture you back then. Tallest in your class. Pigtails. Big ol’ reading glasses.”

“I never wore reading glasses,” Robin protests. Crocodile laughs; she pushes him lightly and he laughs harder. There’s no malice in his smile, only laugh lines at the corners of his mouth, deep and worn like the pages of a used book. She finds herself laughing too, finds herself unable to remember the last time she sat and talked and laughed with somebody, anybody.

Somewhere the clock strikes a new hour. The light’s gone dull and soft in the fading candlelight.

“So what were you like as a boy?”

“Unimportant. That’s what I was.”

“You’re being obtuse.” She sees his brow furrow and adds quickly, “You’re trying to be all…mysterious.”

“You think I’m mysterious?”

“Stop avoiding my question.

Crocodile arches an eyebrow. “What do you think I was like?”

“Skinny. Mean.”

He snorts. “I wasn’t that skinny.”

“You’re still mean.”

Crocodile rolls his eyes. Robin giggles. Her stomach aches. Her head swims with exhaustion and she sways a little on her stool. His hand is at her elbow, steadying her. “You’ve had a long day, Miss All Sunday.”

“I’m fine.” His hands are very big. For all his fancy clothes and his sprawling mansion, his fingers are rough and callused.

“You oughta rest.” His voice sounds very far away.

“Your concern is touching,” she mumbles. “But I can take care of myself, Sir Crocodile. I have been for a long time.”

“We have that in common too, don’t we,” he says quietly.

That word again. We.

The candlelight catches in the curve of his rings, along the scar that splits his face. He gleams and bends with the light, like one of the desert’s mirages. If she tilts her head, if she squints, he is almost the hero of Alabasta, almost something like a man.  
  
  
  
  
She’s in bed with the blankets tucked tight around her. Robin’s head throbs and her mouth has gone dry and sour. Dusty light filters through her curtains and she watches blearily as the sun breaks into shadows and patterns across her bedroom ceiling.

She doesn’t know what time it is. Late, probably. No doubt she’s missed breakfast. Odd that Crocodile wouldn’t call for her. That the maids wouldn’t have disturbed her by now.

Robin sits up too fast, her head throbbing harder in protest. She doesn’t remember how or when she got upstairs. Doesn’t remember taking her shoes off but her heels have been placed at the foot of her bed. She’s still wearing the dress she had on last night, her eyelashes gluey with makeup she never removed.

Something curdles, small and sick and horrible, in the pit of her stomach. Robin scrambles out of bed. She dresses herself quickly, practically: in walking shoes and a skirt long enough to conceal the knife and vial of water she keeps strapped to her outer thigh. The food hidden beneath her bed has gone stale—it’s been too long since she remembered to refresh it. Robin curses herself, grabs the bag of jewelry and dresses instead, and hurries down the long corridor, taking the stairs two at a time.

She isn’t surprised by the squad of marines waiting for her in the lobby. She’s known this was coming. Even before the ships in the harbor last night, even after all the dresses and expensive wine. She’s always known.

“Good morning, Miss All Sunday,” Crocodile says from the foot of the stairs.

The marine captain, who’s been pacing restlessly, spins on his heel toward her. His eyes are bright with hate. The need to vomit surges up the back of her throat. Fifty steps between the top of the landing and the bottom of the staircase. A hundred and fifty feet to cross the lobby. Thirty pairs of hands, to strangle each marine. “Good morning, Sir Crocodile,” she says, “I didn’t know we had company.”

“You’re under arrest, demon,” the marine captain snarls.

“And such pleasant gentlemen too.”

“Pleasant’s a word for it,” Crocodile says. “Seems to me like an awful waste of time for them to have come all this way.”

The captain scowls, rounding on him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I was under the impression that as a warlord, I was afforded certain privileges,” Crocodile drawls, tapping ash from the end of his cigar onto the captain’s shoe. “A generous allowance, for example, or asylum for anyone in my employment.”

“She’s a fugitive. An enemy of the world government.”

“And my casino manager. She’s a valuable member of my staff. She’s not going anywhere.”

“You’re making a serious mistake,” the marine captain warns him.

“No,” Crocodile says calmly. “I believe you are. Run along now. We have work to do.”

The marine captain stands frozen. Behind him, his men shift, uneasy. Crocodile’s upper lip curls, his smile devouring itself. “Run along, _captain.”_ He bites down hard on the word, spitting it back in the marine’s face. Bodyguards materialize, flanking the marine captain and ushering him without ceremony toward the casino’s front doors. His men have no choice but to follow. Only when the last of them has crossed the threshold, only when the doors shut again does Robin finally remember to breathe.

Crocodile withdraws to his office. He leaves her standing alone on the stairs. Little by little, Robin forces herself to release her grip on the bannister, her knuckles taut and white.

It doesn’t make any sense, whatever game it is they’re playing. It’s one of his own design, one where the rules are backwards and only he can possibly win. She realizes she’s moving without thinking, following him across the lobby, through the roped off doors, down the one hundred and seventy steps to his office again. The bananawanis are out of their tank. Most of them are sprawled out by the couches. Demeter’s curled up at the foot of Crocodile’s desk, gnawing on something red and bloodied when Robin storms in. She slams the door behind her too hard. Demeter hisses.

“Clever of you,” Robin says.

Crocodile raises a disinterested eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s odd to see marine warships this far out along the Grand Line.”

“Guess so.”

“I just can’t imagine,” Robin says tightly, “how they managed to track down my exact location.”

“Maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are. Lucky you, that they found you all cozied up here with me.”

“Is that what I am? Lucky?”

No one ever chooses to keep her over the bounty. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Crocodile takes another long drag off his cigar, watching Robin as closely as she’s watching him. “I don’t get nothing out of hurting you, Nico Robin.”

“Not yet,” she retorts.

Crocodile’s reply is drowned out by a guttural snarl of rage. Demeter’s thrashing, caught between the jaws of two smaller, male bananawanis. Their teeth are buried in her chest, in her throat. They spill across the floor, a seething mass of tails and claws and limbs. Crocodile’s desk is knocked askew and one of the couches is overturned. Blood sprays the tiles and Demeter shrieks in anguish.

Robin summons pairs and pairs of hands, reaching into the middle of the fray. The bananawanis are slippery in her grip, their scales tearing open her palms. Her arms strain as she wrenches them apart, pushing the two males away. Over the ringing in her ears, she can hear bodyguards and Baroque Works agents thundering down the stairs. The other bananawanis are already scuttling for their tank. Crocodile towers over the two males. His hook is slightly raised, poised for attack. He stares them down, long and hard, until the larger of the two grunts and takes a step back, and then another.

Demeter’s dragged herself behind Crocodile’s desk. The floor is smeared in broad arcs of red, strewn with scattered bits of intestines. Robin’s palms are wet and bright with pain. Demeter’s body shudders as she gasps for air, and she screams, and she bleeds, and she screams.  
  
  
  
  
A little after two in the morning, the casino closes its doors for the evening. Robin’s hands hurt, stinging from antiseptic, and her face hurts from forcing herself to smile all night long. She’s exhausted and starving.

She finds Crocodile sitting on the floor next to his desk, where she left him hours ago, huddled at Demeter’s side. Demeter’s nowhere to be seen. Crocodile’s taken his rings off. He’s only half-dressed in his sock garters and undershirt. His vest and cravat are balled up in the corner, soaked in blood.

“What a fuckin’ waste,” Crocodile says. He doesn’t seem surprised to see her. It’s as if he’s been here all this time, waiting for her, in case she came back.

Robin sits down on the floor next to him. “I’m sorry,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“She was always an aggressive bitch. And she was getting old. She was bound to piss off one of the bulls sooner or later. Just a matter of time, really.” Crocodile studies his hand. His fingernails are crusted with black, dried blood. “You could have been hurt bad, when you reached in,” he says suddenly.

“Yes,” Robin agrees.

“But you tried to help her anyway. Why?”

“I’m well-acquainted with monsters,” Robin says.

Crocodile touches her face. She’s so startled by the gesture, and he does it with such proprietary ease, that she doesn’t think to pull away. His hand is warm. His gaze is empty. He is studying her, evaluating, considering. Perhaps it should disturb her, but almost everyone looks at her with fear or hate or disgust. His neutrality, the act of simply looking, makes something ache and tighten deep in Robin’s chest.

When he kisses her, it’s only for a moment. Then he pulls back, looking at her again with the same detached curiosity. She knows she shouldn’t do this. She’s smarter than this.

Robin tilts her head, resting her cheek against his palm. When she kisses him back, his lips open against hers. His thumb traces the curve of her cheek, slow and careful.

She lets him help her to her feet. She lets him walk her backwards until her legs hit the edge of his desk and then his hand is moving from her cheek to her hip, urging her up onto it. Robin’s heart pounds as his hook curls beneath the laces of her bodice, the metal cold between her breasts. He rips through the seams; her nipples are hard, her skin prickling in the clammy air of his office.

Crocodile’s watching her. Waiting to see what she’ll do next. Robin folds her skirt up around her waist. She pulls off her underwear, placing it aside. Something shifts in his expression, a shadow of something like hunger. He sinks into his chair, settling himself between her spread legs. The hard ache in her chest sinks, down into the pit of her stomach, down into her cunt.

Crocodile strokes the curve of her thigh. “I won’t be nice,” he says.

“Who says I want you to be,” she replies, and grabs at his hair, urging him onward. He hooks her knees over his broad shoulders; yanks her down, into his mouth, his tongue pressing hot and flat against her, into her, tasting her.

Slick heat between her legs. Teeth on the inside of her thigh.  
  
  
  
  
There are only six bananawanis in the tank the following morning. The floor has been scrubbed clean of bloodstains. There’s a new chair at his desk, opposite his, that he kicks out with his foot when she comes to find him after breakfast.

On his desk is the day’s paper. The front page tells of fire, of night attacks. The marine warships that set sail from Nanohara’s harbor were discovered adrift, ten miles out at sea, the sails still smoldering. No survivors. No need for fear though, the World Government claims. There’s a warlord in the area to keep pirate activity in line. Agents have been deployed to investigate this terrible atrocity.

Crocodile never looks up from the stack of checks he’s signing. Robin sips her tea slowly, reading through the rest of the paper. Once in a while she presses her thighs together, to feel the dull, faded throb of the bruises on her skin.  
  
  
  
  
On first glance, the bananawanis and the plovers are nothing alike.

Evolution tells her though that across time, species have taken many forms, changed and adapted for the sake of survival. Biology tells her that feathers and scales are produced by similar types of tissue. Anatomy tells her that the skeletons of birds and reptiles share common features in their pelvis and skulls. She can trace skeletal morphology back through fossil records, from the places where the two diverged and mutated from one another, back toward a shared origin.

In their bones, they are the same.

“What are you thinking about, Miss All Sunday?” There’s a slightly playful note in Crocodile’s voice. He’s been in a good mood for weeks. Summer is drawing to a close and Alabasta’s Founder’s Day is fast approaching. Rain Dinners has been asked to host one of the many upcoming banquets at the request of the king himself. Crocodile’s had the entire casino in an uproar, scheduling caterers and refurbishing the ballroom and sending out the invitations. He has two of Alabasta’s best tailors in today to fit him for a new suit. They’ve stood him before a mirror in the middle of the parlor, turning him this way and that, draping him in expensive black silk. Crocodile isn’t looking at his reflection though. He’s looking at her.

“I’m looking at the river,” Robin says.

Crocodile makes an impatient gesture. The tailors scurry off to the separate parlor he arranged for them, clutching at their notes and fabrics. Crocodile joins her at the window. The summer’s been long and hot and dry. The riverbanks are cracked and splintering and the reeds have shriveled in the unrelenting sun.

“You do that a lot, don’t you,” he remarks.

“Sometimes.” Robin bites her lip and then ventures, “I like watching the bananawanis. And the plover birds. I find their interactions…fascinating.”

“Yeah,” Crocodile says. “I know exactly what you mean.”

It’s a strange thing: Being understood.

“I have something for you,” he says.

She’s surprised to see that the tailors have left behind a swathe of silk in the shape of an evening gown. “I didn’t think I’d be attending the party.”

“’Course you will. You’re my casino’s manager.”

“Well. You didn’t have to get me another dress.”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” he retorts.

Robin ducks behind the changing screen. The hem of the dress is too long and the bust is a little tight but otherwise hardly any adjustments are needed. She tries not to dwell on how and why they would have already had her measurements.

“It’s critical for us to keep up appearances,” Crocodile is saying. “You reflect upon me. Upon our entire operation.”

“You’re doing your Warlord voice again,” she teases as she emerges from behind the screen.

“My what?”

“Your Warlord voice. You always speak differently. You lose your accent.”

Crocodile gives her a strange look. “I don’t have an accent,” he says flatly. “Do you like the dress or not?”

Robin looks down at the waves of dark silk. “It’s very pretty,” she admits.

“Good. I want to impress.”

“I didn’t realize you cared so much about what Cobra thought of you.”

“I don’t. But we have to play our parts in order to get what we want.”

“And what do you want, Sir Crocodile?” She didn’t mean to speak the question aloud. But always, her curiosity gets the better of her. “More money? More power?”

“What else is there?” he says wryly.

“You already have that,” Robin counters. “You’re a Warlord. Alabasta’s different, though, isn’t it.”

Crocodile studies her a moment. “You’re a strange woman, Miss All Sunday.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“You’re not afraid of me.” He weighs this and then amends, “You’re not afraid of me like everyone else is. You look me in the eye when you talk to me.”

Quiet stretches between them. Through the open window of the parlor, she can hear the distant slosh of the river, the grunts of the bananawanis from the shore.

“I’ve been unimportant for most of my life,” he says. “Anything I’ve ever had, I had to take for myself.” There’s a flicker of a smile, bitter and slight, like light refracting off the edge of a knife. “Cobra has a future. I’m only a Warlord until the next pirate comes along and puts me down.”

“So you thought you’d make yourself a king?”

Crocodile takes her hand in his. For a moment, Robin nearly pulls away, but then he turns her to face herself in the mirror.

It takes a moment to process her reflection. The dress is a dark blue, the train glittering with thousands of little inset stones. It reminds her of the desert sky she watches at night, counting and tracking the changing constellations as time keeps passing her by. Robin looks for the skinny girl that she knows with the tired eyes, the too-thin face. Instead a woman peers cautiously back at her. Her hair’s longer. Her face isn’t thin with hunger anymore, just with age. She’s lost the tall girl hunch in her shoulders.

She looks like her mother.

Crocodile’s gaze finds hers in the mirror. “I think it’s always best to be at the top of the food chain. Don’t you, Miss All Sunday?”  
  
  
  
  
It’s a lovely evening. Guests that she recognizes—and many that she doesn’t—come up to her to thank her for the invitation, to fawn over the casino’s glamour, over her gown, over Crocodile himself.

Cobra arrives with no fanfare and only his daughter and a manservant. He bows before she can curtsy. His robes are too short along his ankles. He’s very tall and thin and he has kind, dark eyes. “I’m terrible at these kinds of things,” he admits sheepishly as he rises out of his bow.

“I’m not much accustomed to it either.”

“What a fine pair we make, eh?” Cobra jokes.

She had been waiting for him to be haughty and dismissive and pampered. Cobra’s smile is so broad, his eyes crinkle up at the corners. There are threads of silver in his hair. Robin swallows around the sudden tightness in her throat and excuses herself to check on the other guests.

Rain Dinners is set aglow in the gold-white light of the chandeliers, the cheerful, friendly neon of the jingling slot machines. The ballrooms are packed. Waiters make their way through the crowd, their trays laden with appetizers and cocktails and small desserts. The table in the banquet hall is laden with more food than they can all possibly hope to eat. Cobra sits among his people, laughing and drinking and eating. He flushes with pride as his young, pretty daughter challenges an ambassador to a debate on the necessity of tariffs. When he gets to his feet to toast Alabasta’s legacy, its future, its people, his voice trembles. A man in love.

He reminds her so much of Clover.

Robin stares down at her plate. She pushes the food back and forth with her fork, willing herself to try and take a bite, if only her stomach would unclench.

“A wonderful evening. Truly wonderful. The best I’ve had in months,” Cobra says, leaning across the table toward Robin again.

“An evening fit for a king,” Crocodile says.

Robin swallows the urge to scream and smiles demurely instead.

The chefs are bringing another round of platters, piled with large filets of grilled pale meat. “Unusual flavor,” Cobra remarks, chewing thoughtfully. “But still very tender. I don’t recognize it.”

“Bananawani,” Crocodile says. “I breed them myself.”

There were once seven bananawanis in the tank. Then there six.

Robin puts her fork down. Across the table, Crocodile cuts himself another large slice of meat. She watches him chew, strands of Demeter’s flesh caught in his teeth, his lips stained with wine. She can see the back of his throat, red and wet.

“Excuse me a moment, won’t you,” she says to the table.

The party fades behind her as she retreats upstairs, to her quarters, locking the door behind her. Robin goes into the bathroom and hunches over the sink, her stomach seizing as she tries again and again to vomit, coughing up only splatters of red wine. She can’t look her reflection in the eye.

Afterwards, she sits on the balcony. Fireworks burst against the night sky and from the courtyard, the orchestra swells. Robin pulls her knees into her chest, closes her eyes, and tries to remember how to disappear.

When he comes for her, it’s late. The party’s been over for hours. The bolt clicks as her door is unlocked. Crocodile’s brought a bottle of wine and two glasses with him. “The rest of dinner was great, by the way,” he says bitingly. “In case you were wondering.”

She doesn’t apologize. He sits down next to her, pours her glass and pushes it into her hand. The wine pools, as rich and dark as blood.

He must have been saving Demeter all this time. Must have preserved her in one of his many clean and sterile kitchens, his staff peeling her apart, cutting her into serving size portions and packaging her away to be frozen for a later meal. Perhaps he did it himself: slit her throat, hacked apart her flesh, cut her down to the bone. At the end, she was just another aggressive bitch gone lame and weak and useless.

“Cobra’s desperate,” Crocodile’s saying smugly. “He needs me to be his friend. The weak always try and cling to the strong. Like you said, with the plover birds and the bananawanis. It’s prey behavior, just trying to find a way not to be devoured.”

She’s surprised by the bolt of anger that courses through her. “You’re wrong,” Robin says.

“No. He’s losing his grip on power. Soon he’ll slip. It’s just a matter of time.”

“The bananawanis are predators, but they’re as susceptible to their environment as any other creature.” She’s aware they’re talking past one another, the same way their minds run parallel, almost overlapping and never quite meeting. “Predators are vulnerable to changes in their ecosystem, vulnerable even to prey animals who can adapt and learn—”

Crocodile strokes her cheek with the back of his hand; his rings scratch her face and Robin jerks out of his reach. “You’re rambling,” he says, getting to his feet. “Have another drink and go to bed.”

Robin gets to her feet as well. “I’m not like you,” she says, because it needs to be said, she _needs_ to hear it said.

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re exactly like me. We can be whatever other people need us to be, we’ll do whatever we have to, as long as it gets us what we want. We’re survivors.”

We.

“Don’t lecture me,” Robin whispers.

“Then stop acting like a little girl and pretending you’re better than me.”

“I _am_ better than you.”

“You’re using Alabasta as a stepping stone, same as me. You don’t give a shit about Cobra or any of them. It’s just the price you gotta pay to cover your own ass and save yourself. That’s how the whole world works, dear. That’s exactly what happened to your precious Ohara—”

She throws her drink in his face.

Crocodile blinks in surprise and Robin hurls her glass at him too. It strikes him across the brow, tearing open his forehead, before it crashes to the floor and shatters. Fractals of glass spin out across the tiles, like scattered diamonds. Blood winds in a seam down the bridge of his nose, beading along the ridge of his scar. She wonders how long it’s been since someone made him taste his own blood. “You’re not a king,” she says coldly. “You’re just a parasite.”

Crocodile dabs the blood and wine from his face with a silk handkerchief. “Do that again,” he says simply, “and I’ll cut you.”

“Get out.”

“It’s my casino. These are my quarters. You’re wearing my clothes, eating my food. If it’s so unbearable for you, by all means, leave.”

“But Sir Crocodile,” she says in her prettiest, most poisonous voice, “what would do you do without me?”

Crocodile doesn’t move. His expression has gone blank and flat, but Robin’s watched him too, and she knows his tells, his weaknesses.

“Get out,” she says again.

Crocodile’s lips pull back into that thing he does that’s almost like a smile. His teeth are fully on display as he tips his head toward her in a mocking little bow and shuts the door behind him.  
  
  
  
  
She’s able to avoid him for almost a week.

But then there are invoices for him to sign off on. There are Baroque Works agents calling, impatiently requesting orders. There are long, hot days where she doesn’t speak to anyone at all and Robin sits alone at her desk, reading the same sentences over and over again, making idle notes as her eyes glaze over, aimless afternoons that seep into quiet, aimless nights.

She intends to be quick about it, for both their sakes. She prepares all the paperwork in advance so that it only needs his signature, writes down her own suggestions for orders to be dispatched so that he can approve them. She knocks briskly at his door, like she never used to, before sweeping impatiently into his office.

He’s not there.

Robin pauses. She puts the papers down on his desk. His office is empty and still dark, despite it being near mid-morning. The bananawanis drift silently past her in their tank.

There’s a muffled clang from the private bath adjoined to his office.

He’s hunched at the sink, only half-dressed. His face is paler than usual and his forehead is dotted with sweat, like whenever he has a day of especially bad pain. His hook is off. Robin stares at the stump of his arm and the soft, almost delicate-looking scar tissue.

“You caught me in the middle of a shave,” he says. He's trying for casual but his voice is too small and thin.

She feels the old ache again, deep in her chest. "Can I help?" Robin asks. Crocodile hesitates, then gives her a short nod.

In his cabinets she finds pomade, a cheaper brand than she would have thought, and a glass jar filled with capsules of what looks like morphine. In the very last drawer she finds an embossed leather case, to hold his shaving kit. It’s the kind of thing a father might bestow upon his son as a gift. It’s hard to think of him as someone’s son.

Crocodile groans when he sits back in the chair she’s pulled up next to the sink. Robin wraps a towel around his neck. She lifts his chin as two more of her hands work soap into a lather and coat his face with it. Under her damp fingertips, she can feel the grains of sand solidifying into something like flesh.

“What would I do without you, Miss All Sunday?” Crocodile says, gazing up at her. There’s no knowing smirk. There’s no tenderness in it. There isn’t even a sliver of resentment. It's stated merely as fact.

Robin brings the razor to his cheek. The blade scrapes, careful, along the jut of his chin.

“You were a bookworm as a child,” Crocodile says, apropos of nothing. “You told me that.”

“It was true,” she says. It was.

“I never had the luxury of books when I was young,” Crocodile says. “No money, no time.”

“No rest for the wicked,” she murmurs.

“I worked on a farm once, when I was young,” he says. “They didn’t pay me. Barely fed me. I was working just to survive. I used to help milk the cows.” There’s a quiet twang in his voice. It only comes out when he’s tired, when he’s had a half-sip more of whiskey than he can handle. The accent might be East Blue, or from the outskirts of the Grand Line. He manages it, like he manages everything: with caution, with iron, brutal control.

Robin wipes off the foam still clinging to the blade. She brings the razor to the base of his neck.

“Then I turned twelve, and they put me in the slaughterhouse. It’s not unusual for them to be fully conscious while they’re being killed. The cows, I mean. Sometimes they panic. But they knew me, because I looked after them. So it was easy to coax them through the door. It was easy to make them hold still while the farmer cut their throats.”

Robin dips the blade back into the water, foam swirling along the surface. Depending on how and where one slices the carotid artery, the injury can take anywhere from minutes to hours to bleed out fully.

“They were just meat in the end.”

She doesn’t know why he’s telling her this. She doesn’t _want_ him to tell her these things. Every part of him that he gives her brings him too close, closer than skin, close enough that the lines between them begin to blur. They overlap in too many ways already: their paranoia, their barbs, the smiles that they never really mean.

She finishes shaving his face and throat, wiping him down with a towel. Her fingers trace the curve of his jaw. Her thumb drags across the line of his lips, dipping inside the heat of his mouth. She remembers reading once that the human jaw is strong enough to bite through fingers, down through bone itself.

Crocodile's watching her almost fondly. “You know, Miss All Sunday, I do believe we’ll kill each other someday.”

“You bring that out in me,” Robin says.

**Author's Note:**

> [please look at this fanart](https://twitter.com/elvenora/status/1205195356092403712?s=20) of the last scene that @elvenora drew, it'll save your life like it saved mine, it's so quiet and haunting and gorgeous.
> 
> if you wanna hit me up, i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nevermordor) or [tumblr](https://nevermordor.tumblr.com/).


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